Running is my 9-5

Sorry, you hafta start at 8 if you want a lunch break? No? Then no breaks for you, ever!
Today I ran from 9 am- 5pm. I ran 56.2 miles, the longest I have ever run by 25.1 miles, and the most I have ever run in one day by 16.2 miles.
Along the way I finished the marathon in 3:31, 50k in 4:11, and 50 mile in 6:59:32.
The course I ran was the same course my team puts on the Skagit Valley Ultras and I set a course record for the 50mile on it. The course is in Mt Vernon and is a 5mile road loop. I started out in what felt like a normal training run pace except I felt good for once, like the first time since the 50k which is not normal! Really I was going just slightly under 8 min pace and for the past few weeks I have struggled running under 9 sometimes for lengths a quarter of the distance! I liked this time trial because I didn't have to worry about pace since it was all so new, just surviving it would be an accomplishment, and once I got to 31.2 miles everything I ran was a PR.
The first 30 miles actually went by pretty quickly. At about 40 miles I realized I could maybe break 7 hours for the 50 mile, despite a bathroom break and throwing up at 49.5 miles I managed a kick and got it which was pretty exciting for my first 50 mile ever! After that I ran kind of slow for a few miles but then managed to 8:50s- 9:10s for the last four miles.
After driving home my right leg was cramping and it was hard to walk up the stairs. But it has since improved and I managed to do a quick 12 minute walk around the house. Well as quick as you can go when you have to turn around furniture every few feet and are being attacked by a killer cat who thought this was the funnest game ever, especially after napping for longer than I had been running probably. I even walked up and down the stairs!
 

40 miles

My legs hurt. But that is legs with an s so it doesn't matter. It's good actually, the more you can be miserable the better, because the better practice it is.
Last Sunday I did something I had never done before- run 4 times in one day- getting a new PR of 40 miles in one day. My Sunday went like this- wake up run 10 miles, stop for an hour and a half, eat breakfast, run 10 more miles, stop for an hour and a half, eat lunch, run 10 miles, lie on the floor for the next hour and a half wishing that it would go by as slowly as your next run is going to, then slog, I mean jog 10 miles. Total time = 11 hours. I am told doing it this way was harder than doing it all at once which I believe. I am also told that the harder running is the better. That which doesn't kill us...to quote a book I didn't like very much but did have this one very good line- only makes us want to die!
But maybe I should try running 40 miles straight before I make that decision. Running any hill right now that is bigger than a speed bump makes my legs feel just the same as that forty miler. You cant get away from hills where my parents live. They are in every direction- east, west, north, south, upwards, backwards, skywards, and sideways. And it's really more than my legs- it's like every single muscle in my whole body is being pounded through a blender. I do not like running when I feel this way every single day because it makes me feel like the world's worst slowest runner in the world.
I know that I am running 20ish miles a day but really that is normal. This bad feeling is not normal :(

USA 50k National Champs (again!)

It has been a whole year since I started my blog, hard to believe. This is where it all started last year- at the USATF 50K National Championships. And this year I am back at Caumsett Park NY on the same course.
That means 10 more 5k loops and 20 more out and backs. That may sound like a lot but the race is getting less and less long to me. It was still long.
I was less nervous the few days before the race this year but that didn't help me to sleep at night at all. I get so worried about not being able to sleep that I pretty much kill all my chances of falling to sleep. It got so bad I even went to the doctor so I could get put on sleeping pills, but I stopped taking them the night before my race so I wouldn't feel groggy the next morning and got a total of about 20 minutes of sleep.  I hate, hate, hate people who tell me that if I want to get a good nights sleep try exercising. Wow, is that what I have been missing? Well I have only run 10 miles in the past 3 days so no wonder I would be sleeping only about a 1/3 of a night- that is like a 1/3 of a day. No! it's exercise that keeps me up in the first place! I also hate people who start snoring a couple seconds after they hit the pillow. And that means most boys I have ever known, and also my cat. Ahh to be a simpler creature, if only...
Anyway I got enough nerves race morning to make up for any shortage. I don't know if nerves stay in your legs bouncing around but that's what it felt like for the first couple laps. I tried to calm myself down by lying ( to be an ultrarunner means you must lie to yourself- constantly) to myself that I was not really nervous but it was like trying to sleep all over again.
I don't know if that explains how I can run a 3:46 30 mile in a time trial and feel pretty good, and then run a 4:01 50k in a race and feel very sore and tired but I don't have another explanation. I am glad that I could still run a PR (by 2 and 1/2 minutes) in such a long race where I felt badly for most of it. I held off running really slow except for one lap or so which was better than last year. I ended up 5th whereas last year I was 4th but this year had a stronger field. Still I missed getting lapped this year by about three seconds!
I was a little disappointed though that my time did not closer match my time trial time and that I feel so sore afterwards when I ran slower. Shouldn't that be the other way around?
 Still I was happy to get a 50k PR and my fourth All American medal. And even though I was hurting we walked around New York for several hours that night so good practice for the 24 hour huh? I'm most glad that I have a coach who supports me and puts so much time and effort into me, thanks Joel!

right after start of the race

                                                                       my  time shot

 with our friend Joe Gray, winner of the men's race!
I have red gatorade all over my face

us in Manhattan, I no longer have gatorade all over me, yay!

Birch Bay

I had a rough start to my race as in before it even started. I spent the night at my friend's house in Bellingham and discovered at about 6:30 in the morning that I locked my keys in the car, which is typical behavior for me really, usually if they are in the car it is the only time I can actually find them. I can't handle keys! My friend very kindly, as it was 6:30 on Sunday morning, offered to drive me to the race which was when I realized I had also locked my running shoes in the car. "Oh well, let's just drive there and I'll see if I can borrow someone's shoes," I said.
Wow, the people willing to give me their shoes. A woman offered me a pair right away, right size, they were technically "walking" shoes but they felt a lot better than my ballet flats. Anyway it was only a half marathon, it's not like I would have to wear them that long.
It was a lot longer than it should have been. I didn't have my watch either, probably in the car! But I figured I must be running like the pile of bricks my legs and feet felt like. It's probably good I didn't have a watch or I would have spent the whole race crying, instead of just the finish line. You know how hard it is to sprint in someone else's walking shoes? I do- I mean like 100 meter sprinter, because that is where some woman caught me and made me run to the finish line like she was Usain Bolt, not someone running a 98 minute half marathon, yuck. Why is it that the slower you run the more pain you feel? Always.
I was still glad I ran though because I had to help out for the rest of the race and if I had not run the race I would have to do it after helping out, aaaaall day, and Joel probably would have made me do a 25k.
I helped out at the finish line, handing people medals and sometimes just standing there until the last finisher of the marathon finished at about 2:30.
Then my day got a lot better- I got to eat, and sit down, and be warm and watch Veronica Mars, where I made the comment- I wish I could do cool things like Veronica! and then my friend and I broke into my car- sooo, wish fulfilled even if we were not quite as smooth as she is. 

There should be a 24 hour steeplechase

Cuz then I could be a steeplechaser. Really. It'd be awesome :D

Geoduck Gallop

Yesterday I paid a visit to my Alma mater to run a sprint race, I'm talking of course about the half marathon. The race is called the Geoduck Gallop, which if that sounds silly to you you have obviously never seen a geoduck run a half marathon. Not many have as they do them underground usually.
When you run as much as I do you get to know the places you live better than most other people. Like it only took me about a month to run over the entire town of Bellingham and then I was already pointing out shortcuts to my roommate- a Western grad. I encircle probably every single road within a five mile radius of my parent's house everyday, at least the ones I'm not in Seattle at my sister's house. I wonder how long before I can start giving her directions places a couple miles away? And that is still true of Olympia even though I haven't run one step there since last year's Geoduck Gallop. I would know my way around better than many lifelong residents. Really I only get lost in all places I travel by car.
This was my third year doing the Geoduck gallop and my first time winning, or winning any half marathon!
I'd done a few workouts before the race but not too many, mostly just a long run everyday. But I did a few mile repeat days with goal times of 6:55 which I hit but not happily. I feel like with all the miles I've been doing 7:20 pace has become easy but 6:55 pace has become the opposite. It used to feel easier than this. Now it is like death.
I went to the race with an open mind though because you can never tell how you will feel in a race based on how you feel in a workout. I always get scared the first mile I will go too slow and be doomed to go slow the entire race so I ran a 6:40, then a 7:00 and more 7s and even 7:20 when it went up the 17th Street hill which I knew all too well was coming, twice now that they redid the course. I thought 7:10 felt a little faster than it should but when I got to 10 miles in 71:20 I realized I was fine and could probably run a marathon if I had to. So I picked it up and tried to pass as many men as I could the last 5k and finished in 1:32:22.
   I've been wondering for awhile when I will ever break 1:30 and I guess I will have to wait some more but at least I won my first half and I went over to collect my prize. WHICH WAS A FREE PAIR OF SHOES!!

I don't want to wear them though because then I would ruin them and they are my prize.
Now I feel like I am ready for the 50k with this and my 30 mile time trial last month, but just to make sure here is one more week of 140 miles.Yay.

I don't need a ride home- it's only 17 miles!

Last Friday was the first time I ran home from work since becoming my sister's nanny in Seattle. It is considerably farther than Petsmart, being 17 miles from Renton but that is just an average run for me. I have averaged 18 miles a day for the past two months. I don't really think about how far this very often. It doesn't seem very far when you are running in circles, just seems like a hamster running on a wheel, but when I run home from Seattle? That is a long ways! But I do it every single day! really puts things in perspective.
Traffic is awful here. It took me 2 hours and 20 minutes to run home and it can take anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour to drive home. I don't know how people put up with this on a daily basis. They might call me crazy, and I am because I would rather run home than be stuck sitting in my little claustrophobic cage of a car not going anywhere, not even able to stretch a leg for who knows how long or what reason. At least when you are running  there are no traffic jams. No one can tell you how fast you can go. 
You know you are getting really crazy when your long run is only 3 hours and 30 minutes and this makes you excited because it is so short! Or when you only have to do 10 mile repeats instead of 15! When 20 miles is not even a long run- it is just average. And when your coach tells you to run a 100 mile week you feel like you have the week off! You look at your old running diaries and dumfounded by how little you ran when you ran 80 miles a week. And you worry about the half marathon you are going to do because you aren't in "sprinting" shape. Well that is me now- just escaped from loony bin. And I'll be back, no doubt!